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MONTAGE
Dis tri Titl ct e
Serving the St. Louis Community College - Meramec community since 1964 • ACP Award Recipient VOLUME 59, ISSUE 6
MARCH. 7, 2024
WWW.MERAMECMONTAGE.COM
Who’s Suing STLCC?
STLCC’s General Counsel offers insight into who is suing the college and why
O
LAWSUITS BY YEAR
JACOB POLITTE MANAGING EDITOR
ver the years, St. Louis Community College has been involved in an extensive history of litigation, including multitudes of cases in recent years concerning employee discrimination and intimidation, personal injuries and other matters. Two recent cases involved those who were former long-time college employees. Clendennen replaces Singer Over the course of researching the matter, The Montage was informed that the college has a new General Counsel. Amy Clendennen joined the college in mid-January 2024 following the departure of Lucy Singer; she most recently worked as the General Counsel for Truman State University, her alma mater. Prior to that, she worked for close to 15 years in private practice, including 13 years working at Tueth, Keeney, Cooper, Mohan & Jackstadt, P.C. “They represent primarily K-12 school districts and higher education institutions,” Clendennen said. “So I’ve been in education law pretty much my whole career. Public education is a passion of mine.” Clendennen said that while she enjoyed working at Truman State, family ties brought her back to the St. Louis area. She says her role as General Counsel for STLCC may have some different responsibilities than her role at Truman was, but spoke to what she has done in the past and what she expects to do in her new role. “Aside from the litigation, I review a lot of contracts. I work with HR closely on any type of personnel issues [and] potential conflicts,” she said. “I work with Student Services, if there’s an issue of student has a concern or complaint that might potentially lead to litigation, a lot of what I do and why any university or college would have a general counsel, or an attorney in house is to try to prevent litigation from happening to try to solve problems before they occur.” She continued, “And so I tend to be pretty conservative in my advice, and I tend to say ‘how can we fix this potential problem before it gets worse?’ So that tends to be my strategy. [It] doesn’t always work, but I do what I can.” A prelude to the cases The Montage reached out to several parties involved or named in the court documents. The only person to respond to a request for comment was Chancellor Jeff Pittman, who declined to speak on the cases other than to reiterate that “College staff cannot comment on personnel issues or pending litigation.” The two plaintiffs in these cases were long time employees of the college, a fact that Clendennen speculates is not something the college dwells on. “The college has so many employees and you’re talking about two out of the thousands of employees only to or have a problem, that’s not so bad,” she said. “I’ve experienced just meeting people here since I’ve started and the administration is all pretty new. So my hope is that if there were problems in the past, that one of the reasons we have a new administration, or one of the things that they were focused on is making sure not to repeat past mistakes.” Clendennen also said she doesn’t think that the amount of litigation the college is involved in is a cause for concern. “I think every employer, every business is going to be involved in litigation, because the reality is, you know, I can review a situation,” she said. “I can give my approval that we’re doing everything right, go ahead and proceed. And we can still get sued. Anybody can sue anybody for any reason. Now how far that goes, obviously, depends on the merits of what they’re claiming.” The college has hired outside legal representation for many of its cases, including the two being discussed on the following pages. Clendennen says this is a normal practice. “It’s just not possible to handle the litigation for the college and also do all of the other day-to-day stuff that I have to do,” she said. “So the college hires outside counsel from a variety of law firms to handle; not just lawsuits, but if there are disputes that arise that may potentially lead to litigation. Or sometimes if it’s like even negotiating, or a real estate lease, things like that, we may hire outside counsel for that.” Clendennen continued, “And then my role is really just to oversee the other lawyers who are working on those matters and make sure that they’re meeting deadlines, and that, you know, I personally like to review everything that they prepare to file. So that, you know, I know that it’s up to the quality that we expect.”
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01. Case Type: AC Misc Associate Civil-Other
Case Number: 15SL-AC20007 Filing Date: 08/03/2015 Style of Case: JAMES KEETON V ST LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
02. Case Type: CC Employment Discrim.
Case Number: 1522-CC09924 Filing Date: 06/17/2015 Style of Case: LYNN VENHAUS V STL COMM COLLEGE-FOREST PARK ET AL
2015
03. Case Type: CC Injunction
Case Number: 15SL-CC03511 Filing Date: 10/13/2015 Style of Case: JANE DOE V ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
01. Case Type: AP Civil Appeal Circuit
Case Number: ED104574 Filing Date: 07/01/2016 Style of Case: JANE DOE, APP V ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE, RES
2016
02. Case Type: AP Tran to SC- Post Opinion Case Number: SC96018 Filing Date: 11/03/2016 Style of Case: THEODIS BROWN V. ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE, ETC
01. Case Type: CC Employment Discrim.
Case Number: 1722-CC11963 Filing Date: 12/18/2017 Style of Case: MARK POTRATZ V THE COMM COLLEGE DISTRICT OF STL
02. Case Type: CC Employment Discrim.
Case Number: 17SL-CC02695 Filing Date: 07/26/2017 Style of Case: DONNA WHITE V ST LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE ET AL
2017
03. Case Type: CC Employment Discrim. Case Number: 17SL-CC03070 Filing Date: 08/22/2017 County: St. Louis County Style of Case: DOROTHY J WELTY V THE JUNIOR COLLEGE DISTRICT OF STL
01. Case Type: CC Pers Injury-Other
2018
Case Number: 1822-CC00151 Filing Date: 01/24/2018 County: City of St. Louis Style of Case: STEVEN TAYLOR V ST LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE ET AL
02. Case Type: AP Civil Appeal Circuit
Case Number: ED106889 Filing Date: 05/31/2018 Style of Case: JEFF TACINA, APP V STL COMMUNITY COLLEGE, RES
01. Case Type: CC Other Tort
Case Number: 2022-CC09524 Filing Date: 08/17/2020 Style of Case: JEFF TACINA V ST LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE-FOREST PA
2020
01. Case Type: AC Small Claims over $100
2021
Case Number: 2122-SC00118 Filing Date: 05/24/2021 Style of Case: JEFF TACINA V ST LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE
01. Case Type: CC Employment Discrim.
Case Number: 22SL-CC03137 Filing Date: 06/29/2022 Style of Case: IVORY HILL V ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION
2022
02. Case Type: CC Other Miscellaneous Actions Case Number: 22SL-CC03780 Filing Date: 08/24/2022 Style of Case: RICHARD HERSHEY V THE JUNIOR COLLEGE DISTRIC ET AL
2023
01. Case Type: AC Small Claims over $100
Case Number: 23SL-SC00708 Filing Date: 07/21/2023 Style of Case: NRANCILIO LLC V ST. LOUIS COMMUNITY COLLEGE - CORP
DISCLAIMER: This list does not include all lawsuits against STLCC per year. For more details, visit courts.mo.gov/cnet